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I had a debate with my friend about this topic because he had a photo captioned:

Seth and I playing lion king

and I said it should be

Seth and me playing lion king

Which is correct?

tchrist
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Lachie Robinson
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    Both are used when it is the subject of a sentence; conventional grammar demands "Seth and I". Although your phrase is not a sentence, an ellipsis where this is the subject of the sentence seems the most reasonable. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 06 '13 at 04:39
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    I know it's a similar question but I need an answer for this specific example. – Lachie Robinson Apr 06 '13 at 04:40
  • Definite nTuplicate. – Kris Apr 06 '13 at 06:10
  • I have voted to close, but I'll just say that you can use whichever you like. I would write 'Seth and me', because it's less formal. – Barrie England Apr 06 '13 at 07:49
  • More on this here, here and here. – J.R. Apr 06 '13 at 09:19
  • @Cerberus In English, we would never label our photos in the nominative; it just isn’t done. One labels it “me”, never “I”. Same for the other pronouns. Nohat explains this here. – tchrist Apr 06 '13 at 13:59
  • This is only a duplicate of the ice-cream question, not of the other one. – tchrist Apr 06 '13 at 14:32
  • This is a picture of me: label it me. – tchrist Apr 06 '13 at 14:57
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    @tchrist: In English, traditional grammar recommends "I" for subjects. The status of photo labels is debatable, as I said. I haven't studied your dialect. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 06 '13 at 15:39
  • @Cerberus It’s not “my dialect”, so you can drop that now. There is no question of “traditional grammar” either. Read nohat’s answer. The default case in English is the object case. Native English speaker no more label things “I” than native French speakers label things “je”. It’s just plain me, just like it’s moi. In other languages, it works differently, but not here. – tchrist Apr 06 '13 at 15:52
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    @tchrist: We are clearly talking about different things. English is nothing like French. Read a few style books. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 06 '13 at 16:00
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    @Cerberus If you think native English speakers label things with bare subject pronouns instead of bare object pronouns, then you should stop reading style books and get to know some native speakers instead. – tchrist Apr 06 '13 at 16:03

2 Answers2

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You can't really insist on one or the other being correct, because you are not working with a complete sentence. I think the best you can do is to recognize that the majority of English speakers would use "Seth and me."

Even if you add the implied initial phrase that would make it an entire sentence ("This is"), you still wind up with some debate. "This is I" is formally correct (i.e "This is Seth and I playing lion king"), but the vast majority of English speakers consider it pompous and awkward, and still would use "me."

John M. Landsberg
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  • Your first sentence is best; it depends what you consider the implied words are. 'This is a picture of Seth and I' would be actually wrong ( a classic hypercorrection). – Tim Lymington Apr 06 '13 at 11:11
  • @TimLymington Exactly. If you consider it that way, "Seth and [somebody]" become indirect objects, and "me" becomes correct. – John M. Landsberg Apr 06 '13 at 16:14
  • I'm not even sure that the 'formally correct' label is warranted nowadays. 'Formerly', perhaps. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 19 '16 at 00:11
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It has to be “Seth and me playing lion king” as the title of a photo. Imagine it without Seth there at all: you would always, only, and ever label that photo “Me”, never “I”. Since the case of a pronoun never changes when you add in somebody else with an and, we arrive at “Seth and me playing lion king” as the only right answer.

We just had a question about this, but see also this answer for more about English using the object case not the subject case by default.

Community
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tchrist
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